Even James Van Der Beek Does Not Understand the Immense Popularity of Dawson’s Creek

Joey: So we were friends, then we were a couple, then we were friends again, then we were a couple… what are we now?Dawson: We’re Dawson and Joey.Joey: You think every Joey has a Dawson and every Dawson has a Joey?Dawson: I hope so. For their sake.

So in retrospect, maybe Dawson’s Creek wasn’t worthy of inciting one of the most dedicated teenage followings of the 90s. The dialogue was bloated, the characters weren’t all that likable, the theme song was a little too blatant in its heart-tugging. But the high schooled masses kept coming back for more.

James Van Der Beek can’t seem to really wrap his head around it either. In an interview with New York Magazine‘s Vulture touching on the Dawson’s reunion reported to unfold on the season premiere of Don’t Trust the B—— in Apartment 23, in which Van Der Beek plays a hilariously exaggerated version of himself attempting to get the ol’ gang back to together, he muses on how the show’s popularity did not add up:

But being on something that has the impact that that [Dawson’s Creek] did, it’s just — I don’t know. There’s almost kind of no place to put it in the realm of normal, sensible life experience. It’s just one of those things that just does not compute in a lot of ways. So it’s been really interesting to touch base with a lot of those guys this many years out, and laugh about some of the things we thought we knew, and just kind of joke about, Boy, how crazy was that? It was just a very unique experience. But we’ve all kind of come to a good place on it.